Video: Basic menu customization

Now that we've been through the user interface components, I want to take a minute to talk a little about basic menu customization. Now, I wouldn't recommend that those who are new to Inventor jump into the system and start doing major customization. As a matter of fact, I would recommend against it. That said, and as you become familiar with the interface, knowing how to do basic menu customization can come in quite handy and make a lot of your design process faster. So what I'm going to do is walk through a couple different customizations that you can do and even some that I do on a regular basis.

Already up and running? This course is the next step in building your Autodesk Inventor skillset. Author John Helfen takes you through the interface and key processes of this parametric design system, including sketching, part modeling, assemblies, and drawings. Each process works in conjunction with the rest, allowing you to create parts and assemblies and document them in a way that they can be manufactured. Learn how to set up your project file; create and modify geometry; create extrusions, sweeps, and lofts; build parts with placed features and patterns of features; and create iParts and iFeatures. John also covers assembly visualization techniques, drawing views, and balloons and parts lists.

The course was created and produced by John Helfen. We're honored to host this training in our library.

Basic menu customization

Now that we've been through the user interface components, I want totake a minute to talk a little about basic menu customization.Now, I wouldn't recommend that those who are new toInventor jump into the system and start doing major customization.As a matter of fact, I would recommend against it.That said, and as you become familiar with the interface, knowing how to do basicmenu customization can come in quite handy andmake a lot of your design process faster.So what I'm going to do is walk through a couple different customizations thatyou can do and even some that I do on a regular basis.

The three areas we're going to discuss are the ribbonbar, the quick access toolbar, and the navigation bar.Now, I'll start with the ribbon bar but before I get into thecustomization, I want to talk a little bit about some of the uy stuff.I mean to go ahead and double click onthe engine block to get into the part modeling environment.And you can make these customizations in any environment butI've chosen the part modeling environment as my starting point.The user interface component I want to callout real quickly before we get started, arethese triangles that you see on some of the buttons and the labels for the panels.

What those triangles indicate are the fact that there'ssome type of information that's hidden underneath that component.For the button, for example, you have the top half, whichis the default command, or the last used version of this command.The bottom half is a drop downthat actually shows you other functionality that's available.For example, if I select cylinder, it changes the top half to show thecylinder, and it'll remain that way untilI select another option from underneath that menu.

So if I go back to this drop-down andselect Box, you'll see that, that menu has been updated.So that's one minor thing that you should know about for basic customization.But to expand on that, I want to talk alittle bit about the drop-down here on the panel.If I click on this label, I am exposing the expanded panel.Up on the top you have the main panel, and down below you have the expanded panel.Moving your cursor off of that auto hides that expanded panel.Now the reason I bring this up, is while it's now majorcustomization, it's one of the things that can help your design process.

Say for example, you're doing part modeling, and while youdon't use the derived functionality very often you do use decals.You put stickers on your parts quite often.If that's the case, then having the decal functionalityhidden in the expanded view, could be quite inconvenient.It means that every single time you want to dothat functionality, you have to make one extra click,which might not seem like a lot, but ifyou're doing it frequently, it's going to slow you down.So what I want to do is, really quickly, swap these two commands.And I can do that by right clicking on the derive functionality orany of these commands for that matter and selecting move to expanded panel.

You can see it's been removed from the main panel andif I expand the expanded panel you can see that here's derive.Now, I can right click on the decal and selectmove to main panel, and I've essentially swapped those two functionalities.Again, not something major, but it could be if you usedecal, and that's something you can do with all these commands.So it's important as you move along that you mayfind certain areas where you want to make tweaks like this.I'm going to go ahead and do this one more time.I'm going to right click on the decal and say move to expanded panel.

I'm going to open the expanded panel, right click onderive, and hit Move to main panel, and I'mdoing this just so you can see it onemore time plus I actually do use the drive functionality.So, I'm going to leave it like that.The next area for customization is the quick access tool bar.Now, the quick access tool bar allows me to put commands that I use frequently upon the quick access toolbar so no matterwhat tab I'm on I can access those commands.Now if I go to the view tab youcan see the visibility panel an object visibility button.

And this is the one I'm going to use toshow customization and it's one I use quite frequently.But what it does is it enables work features I've created,work planes work axis work points, when I was building this part.Now as you can see, for more complex parts thosework planes can get in the way quite a bit.And you can turn the visibility off individually but thisallows you to do it in a quick, bulk action.Now I don't want to have to switch to theview tab every single time I want to do that.So what I'm going to do is right-click on thatcommand and select add to the quick access tool bar.

And you can see I have the button here on thequick access tool bar and over here on the view tab still.So it doesn't move the command like it did when we were movingit to the expanded panel, it essentially makes it available in multiple locations.So if I go back to the 3D model tab Ican still very quickly toggle on and toggle off my work features.Now, you can do this with any command.It just happens to be that the objectvisibility is one that I use quite frequently.The final place that I want to talk about basic customization is the navigation bar.

In a previous movie when I was talking aboutthe navigation tools, I mentioned that I don't usemost of these tools because I can get pan,zoom and rotate all from my, mouse button combinations.But I did mention that the things I do use are not even visible by default.And that's what I wanted to talk about customizing.If we go back to the view tab, I wanted to call out theorthographic toggle, so you can toggle betweenorthographic and perspective, and the visual styles command.Those are two things I that I usequite frequently when doing design because it helpsme visualize my design and understand how thingswork and where things are located in space.

But I don't want to have to go to the view tab every time I want to make a switch.So, one of the options I have for the navigation bar is touse this triangle in the bottom right hand corner to bring up other options.I can check things that I want and uncheck things that I don't.So if you wanted to remove pan, zoom and rotate from thatmenu you can simply click them to toggle them on and off.In this case, I'm going to turn on myProjections and I'm going to turn on my Visual Styles.And what I've done is simply added two new buttons to this menu whichcould also be found in the View tab, but are now more readily available.

And I can simply, from this location, nowchange my Perspective or go to Orthographic View, orchange my visual styles, perhaps I want to seevisual edges only, perhaps I want to see wire frame.I can get to those very easily now without having to switch to the View tab to do so.

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